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Australians at the First Battle of El Alamein

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Australians at the First Battle of El Alamein Road to Ruin: The 9th Australian Division and the First Battle of El Alamein, July 1942. Nicole Townsend Abstract Throughout July 1942, the Allies made numerous attempts to break through the Axis lines at El Alamein, however, these operations were largely unsuccessful and failed to achieve a decisive victory. On 27 July, a final assault against enemy lines was launched with the aim of capturing the key feature of Miteiriya Ridge, commonly referred to as Ruin Ridge. Although the operation met with initial success, the operation ended in complete disaster as the British and Australian infantry involved were surrounded by German tanks and forced to surrender. During this single operation, over 1000 men were lost. The 2/28th Australian Infantry Battalion was virtually wiped out whilst the British 69th Brigade suffered casualties of more than 600 men. Using archival sources held by the Australian War Memorial, this paper analyses the disaster at Ruin Ridge to determine what went wrong. It will be argued that the failure of the operation was due largely to poor operational planning and the failure of armoured support to materialise as planned. Introduction A seemingly innocuous railway siding located approximately 100 kilometres west of the key port city of Alexandria on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, El Alamein was the site of three key battles between July and November 1942. The 9th Australian Division played a significant role in each of the three battles, suffering particularly heavy casualties in both the first and third battles. Though the third and final battle (which the Allies would call the second battle of El Alamein) would live on in memory as the most significant, with the battle consistently heralded as a major turning point in the Mediterranean theatre, the July operations under Field Marshal Claude Auchinleck were equally significant. Encompassing a series of operations of both great 2 Australian War Memorial, SVSS paper, 2016 Nicole Townsend, Road to Ruin: 9th Australian Division and the First Battle of El Alamein, July 1942 © Australian War Memorial success and devastating failure, the First Battle of Alamein halted the German advance into Egypt and laid the ground work for the decisive victory gained by Auchinleck’s successor, Lieutenant General Bernard Montgomery, three months later. This paper will examine the disastrous final engagement of 27th July which aimed to capture Miteiriya Ridge, commonly referred to as Ruin Ridge, and break through the enemy lines in the northern sector of the El Alamein frontline. This assault was a complete failure and resulted in the loss of three battalions, including most of the Australian 2/28th Battalion. Using archival and official records held by the Australian War Memorial, it will be argued that the primary causes of the failure of the operation and the heavy losses sustained by the British Eighth Army during the assault were the result of poor operational planning and the failure of armoured support to materialise as planned. Historical context: The Battle for Egypt On the eve of the First Battle of Alamein, the Allies had yet to achieve a decisive victory over the Axis forces. Though the Allied war effort was not entirely victory-free prior to July 1942, the war from the Allied perspective was, in the words of Peter Bates, “characterised by failure”.1 As Winston Churchill would later assert, at this point the Allies had yet to attain a decisive victory over Axis forces; Hitler and his allies had by that time occupied much of Europe, while the invasion of Russia, codenamed Operation Barbarossa, had been launched only a few weeks earlier.2 In the air, Bomber Command was losing men and aircraft at an exponentially high rate and, at sea, the Allies were tied up in the Battle of the Atlantic where German U-boats were creating havoc in the seas between North America and Europe. Major Donald Robert Jackson of the Australian 24th Brigade, noted in his field message book that there was “little doubt there is a great strategic emergency in the Middle East with a real risk of loss of Egypt and all we have fought for over many months.”3 1 Peter Bates, Dance of War: The story of the Battle of Egypt, London, Leo Cooper, 1992, p. 2. 2 Winston Churchill, The Second World War: The Hinge of Fate, London, Cassell, 1954. 3 Donald Robert Jackson, Autobiography, AWM, MSS1193, vol. 1, p. 237. 3 Australian War Memorial, SVSS paper, 2016 Nicole Townsend, Road to Ruin: 9th Australian Division and the First Battle of El Alamein, July 1942 © Australian War Memorial Although the Desert War has long been considered secondary to the greater war in Europe, control of Egypt was critical to maintaining a chance at victory. For this reason, the battles of Alamein have been rightly referred to as the ‘Battle for Egypt’ by both historians and veterans of Alamein, including Auchinleck himself.4 The consequences of failing to halt Rommel’s advance into Egypt would have been two- fold. Firstly, ultimate victory heavily relied on maintaining naval power in the Mediterranean, with the Sea centrally located within the European theatre. In turn, British naval power and capabilities in the Mediterranean relied upon access to and control of the port city of Alexandria in Egypt. If the port was lost, the naval support for all Middle Eastern and North African campaigns would also be crippled. Access to the Suez Canal was also integral to the British war effort. Running from the far north east of Egypt to the Red Sea, the Suez Canal was a direct line of communication and key transport route used by the Allies to move troops and materiel between Europe, the Middle East, and the Pacific theatres. Without the Suez Canal, Britain would lose the ability to connect with its Commonwealth nations and military interests and resources in India, Asia and the Pacific within a relatively short period of time. The loss of access to the Suez Canal would force the Allies to travel exceedingly longer distances; for example, transport by sea from London to the Middle East base would be forced to divert around the southern tip of Africa on a journey of 6 – 13 weeks. The Allies also feared a two-pronged attack against British forces based in the Middle East and the Levant. Although hindsight tells us Hitler’s ‘great pincer movement’ to seize control of the Middle East and its oil fields was never a serious plan of action but rather a mere ‘consideration,’ the threat was all too real for the Allies. A paper submitted by Field Marshal Auchinleck’s Middle East Joint Planning Staff warned that, should such an attack eventuate and the Axis forces break through from the north, the Eighth Army would neither the manpower nor the resources to 4 Bates, Dance of War, p. 6. 4 Australian War Memorial, SVSS paper, 2016 Nicole Townsend, Road to Ruin: 9th Australian Division and the First Battle of El Alamein, July 1942 © Australian War Memorial defend both the Suez Canal and Persian oil fields.5 Given the highly mechanised nature of the Second World War, access to oil reserves was critical to the global war effort, thereby making control of Egypt, the “gateway to the Middle East and its oil fields,” strategically important.6 As Matthew F. Holland has asserted, the stakes were high and Britain’s “survival” was on the line.7 Defending the Alamein Line In his memoir, Taradale to Tarakan, Sergeant Joseph Stokes, 2/7th Australian Field Regiment, wrote of Alamein: “we must have passed through it without noticing it. No wonder … there was nothing there.”8 Major Jackson echoed this sentiment, noting that the area to be defended was “an undistinguished and almost featureless piece of Egyptian coastline.”9 A small railway siding located approximately 100 kilometres west of Alexandria, Egypt, Alamein would indeed appear inconspicuous, however, the strategic potential of the position made it stand out to Allied strategists. As early as 1939, the Allies acknowledged the Alamein line as a prime position from which to defend Egypt from western invasions and began fortifying the area. Situated along the coastline, Alamein was bordered to the north by the Mediterranean Sea, and the impassable Qattara Depression to the south. Though large in scale at a length of approximately 60 kilometres, this position provided a geographically suitable position from which the Eighth Army could halt the Axis advance. In his previous engagements with the Eighth Army in the Western Desert, flanking manoeuvres were a mainstay in Rommel’s tactical repertoire. The Qattara Depression was characterised by quicksand making it impassable unless Rommel diverted to the south around the Depression and through the Sahara Desert, an unviable manoeuvre given the time and resources required to do so. As such, the battlefield was naturally 5 Mark Johnston and Peter Stanley, Alamein: The Australian Story, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 18. 6 Matthew F. Holland, America and Egypt: From Roosevelt to Eisenhower, Westport, Connecticut, Praeger, 1996, p. xix. 7 Ibid. 8 Joseph Placid Stokes, Taradale to Tarakan, AWM, MSS1120, 1 of 2, p. 190. 9 Jackson, Autobiography, vol. 1, p. 240. 5 Australian War Memorial, SVSS paper, 2016 Nicole Townsend, Road to Ruin: 9th Australian Division and the First Battle of El Alamein, July 1942 © Australian War Memorial protected from the flanking tactics which Rommel had previously employed to secure victory over the Allies and created a bottleneck which would force the advancing Axis troops to face the Allied army head on if they wanted to open the way to Cairo and the Suez Canal beyond. Arrival at the front Australian involvement at El Alamein spanned almost the entirety of the July operations.
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